The Best Time to Charge Your Phone

The Best Time to Charge Your Phone

You may be in the habit of plugging in your smartphone to charge it whenever your battery gets low or, simply whenever you have time. But overcharging a battery can hurt its lifespan.

A new study suggests there’s actually a better time to charge your phone’s lithium-ion battery, at a point where it is most efficiently able to accept power. If you want your phone to charge faster, let the battery dip super low before you plug it in.

“Generally, a battery can accept higher charge rates at a lower state-of-charge percentage than it can at higher percentage,” Mark Carlson, an engineer at Motorola, told Forbes.com. “So a battery at 10 percent can generally accept higher charge current than a battery at 50 percent.”

Carlson says the phone should charge faster when it has lower battery power, but he says there are exceptions.

“The actual charge rate for any phone will depend both on the battery charge current limits along with the capability of the external charger and the charge control circuitry in the phone,” Carlson says. “So while it may be true that the charge current can be faster at lower battery levels, the hardware and software in the charging system needs to support it.”